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ANNUAL REPORT 



OF TH E 



ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS 

ft 

FOR PROMOTING THE 

ABOLITION or SLAVERY, 

^ AND 

Improving the Condition of the Free People of Color. 



FOU THE YEAR 1846. 



;>^HILADELPHIA. 

Ailit .1' ('UjC cOiOfGi "'^8, Printer, 299 Market Street, 

1S?6. 



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REPORT. 



Tn presenting a summary of our labors for the past 
year, we are sensible of the little we have accomplished; 
but for the encouragement of others we can state, that 
if, as we hope, this little has been blessed to those for 
whom it was intended, we know that it has been doubly 
blessed to us in its performance. 

The meetings of the Association have all been resru- 
larly held, and, as heretofore, the subjects of Education, 
Free Produce, and collecting and disseminating informa- 
tion on the subject of Slavery were intrusted to Standing 
Committees on each. 

The condition of the colored portion of our population 
has claimed much of our attention; and, as opportunity 
offered, we have endeavored to promote their advance- 
ment in morality and intelligence by public and private 
labor and an evening school; for the latter, considerable 
pecuniary outlay was necessary. This branch of our 
labors we continue to feel an important one, being aware 
that much misapprehension exists in relation to the real 
condition of the free people of color. Statistics of pau- 
perism and crime, as made up from our alms houses and 
prisons, should not be received without due examination. 
Much the larger portion of the white inmates of these 
places comes from the class who are, from their rela- 
tions to general society, most exposed to adverse circum- 
stances, being generally known as the laboring class; 
and as our colored friends almost wholly belong to this. 



we should, in making statistic comparisons, not judge 
them as is commonly done, in reference to the whole 
white population, but only in regard to those with 
whom they fairly come in competition, whose means of 
living like their own are precarious, and who are sub- 
jected to difficulties and temptations from which the 
others are exempt. Comparisons thus drawn, give an 
aspect to their condition very ditferent from that which 
is ordinarily assumed, and is consistent with what we 
might expect from extended personal intercourse with 
them. It has long since been ascertained that in this 
country they not only pay taxes sufficient to support 
their own poor, but actually assist in supporting the poor 
whites. Through all their difficulties many of them 
have attained a high standard of intelligence — and in 
their domestic relations exhibit a refinement which would 
be creditable to the most favored of our own color. We 
are the more willing to be explicit on this subject, from 
the belief that some have had their sympathies checked 
and their interest in the progress of Emancipation dimin- 
ished by admitting the preposterous assertion, that the 
free colored people are little if any better off than the 
slaves. 

Amona:st the encourao-ins: circumstances connected 
with our testimony against Slavery, is the increasing 
desire to avoid the contamination of its fruits, and the 
extended facilities for procuring goods free from such 
contamination. Large quantities of cotton, the produce 
of free labor, of a quality much superior to that for- 
merly had, has, we are informed, been received in this 
city, and will be speedily manufactured. Some of the 
manufacturers in England, we are told, contemplate 
manufacturing free goods. Recent advices state, that 
sugar to almost any amount may now be obtained 
from China, and that the difficulties of raising cotton in 
India have been overcome. The disposition to avoid the 



produce of slave labor Mhich seems to be extending 
over the world, must contribute to the general feeling 
against Slavery. 

Collecting and disseminating information on the sub- 
ject of Slavery has occupied a large share of our atten- 
tion. The Committee set apart for this purpose have 
made monthly reports to the Association of events that 
have transpired bearing upon the testimony, and the re- 
marks and concerns growing out of these have added 
much to the interest of our meetings. A remonstrance 
against the admission of Texas, as a Slave State, was 
forwarded to Congress by direction of the Association; 
and petitions to our State Legislature, on behalf of the 
colored people, were printed and circulated amongst our 
citizens. The readiness with which signatures were 
obtained to these, and their favorable reception by the 
Legislature were encouraging. Several publications 
which were believed calculated to promote an interest 
in the concern, have been re-published and extensively 
distributed. 

In taking a retrospect of the past year, there are many 
indications of an increasing interest in the subject of 
Slavery. So closely has the system become interwoven 
with our religious, social, and civil relations, that scarce- 
ly a public body of importance assembles in which its 
consideration does not claim attention. Throughout the 
Northern States legislative deliberations and enactments 
show an increasing disposition to regard the rights of 
the coloured people; and in some of them, a desire to be 
absolved from all participation in the Slave System. 

In some of the Northern States laws have been passed 
forbidding the interference of their State officers, (as 
such.) and the use of their prisons, for the apprehension 
and security of fugitive slaves. In Pennsylvania, a bill 
of similar import has been reported by a special commit- 
tee. 

1* 



Political papers which, from their very nature, float 
on the tide of popular opinion, give evidence that this 
popular opinion is demanding more and more informa- 
tion in reference to Slavery. Even in the South, we 
find an earnest discussion going on through the public 
press. Cassius M. Clay, formerly a large slave-holder, 
after emancipating his own slaves, has given himself 
and his extended means earnestly to the task of indu- 
cing others to follow his example. The " Baltimore 
Saturday Visiter," a paper of wide circulation, has taken 
strong ground; and other journals still further south, 
have opened their columns to essays on this subject. 

It is evident that • persons interested in Slavery are 
giving increased attention to the great experiment insti- 
tuted in the British West Indies; and notwithstanding the 
efforts made by interested parties to misrepresent the 
workings of Emancipation there, we have reason to be- 
lieve that the truths of its happy results are beginning 
to force themselves on the convictions of our southern 
planters. 

The arrival of the slaver Pons at our wharves from 
the coast of Africa, bringing the revolting details of her 
iniquitous cruise, and the shocking inhumanity and suf- 
fering growing out of it, has created a deep feeling in 
our community. The circumstance of her having been 
built and fitted out by our own citizens, and the suspicion 
that her destination at the time was known and approv- 
ed by some, has brought the question of Slavery home 
to many minds. This obvious participation in some of 
the worst features of the odious system, gives a conclu- 
sive denial to the assurance that we of the north have 
nothing to do with Slavery. 

The African Slave Trade had almost been lost sight 
of as an object of interest here; but the knowledge that 
no fewer than three vessels fitted out from our ports have 
recently been captured by one American cruiser, and 



the startling announcement made in the National Intel- 
ligencer, of Washington, that in about eleven months 
upwards of one hundred slave ships have been captured 
on the coast of Africa, has again brought the subject be- 
fore us with solemn claims on our attention. If such a 
large number are captured, a still greater must be en- 
gaged in the traffic. VVe may picture to ourselves the 
awful mental and bodily sufferings of the poor victims, 
as their homes are given to the torch — their friends to 
the sword, and they are themselves dragged to a doom 
the most terrible that their imaginations can conceive : 
and we may have some conception of the debasing in- 
fluences accruing to the actors in these horrible trafje- 
dies — but a full knowledge of all, few will be able to 
realize. 

As we contemplate this picture, and our hearts revolt 
at its enormities, do we remember that its counterpart 
exists amongst us? that a domestic slave trade, sanction- 
ed by our government, participated in by our citizens, 
facilitated by our prisons, and whose head quarters is 
our national capitol, is actively carried on in our midst? 
And as a peculiarity, stamping it with features almost 
beyond belief, that this domestic slave trade, with its 
abundant inducements to evil — its cruelties and depriva- 
tions — its heart rendings, and its violations of the most 
sacred sympathies of our natures, owes its continuance 
to the fact that a large number of professing christians 
are engaged in rearing men and women for the southern 
shambles, as brute beasts are reared; and that in many 
instances the subjects furnished are known to be the 
children of those who thus consign them to the rice 
swamps, the sugar plantations, and the cotton fields. 

In giving such revolting details, it is not our aim to 
arouse feelings of indignation or sympathy merely; these 
we are aware may be misdirected and misapplied — but 
that each one of us, remembering the relations we bear 



as consumers of the fruits, and upholders of laws that 
support the system, and as common brethren to those 
"Engaged in it, may seek to know our own duties and 
endeavour to carry them out with fidelity. 

That those more immediately implicated in this trade 
are not entirely insensible of its character, the following 
extracts will show : 

The New Orleans Courier of February 15, 1845, 
says: "We think it would require some casuistry to show 
that the present slave-trade from Virginia is a whit bet- 
ter than the one from Africa." 

Professor Andrews, of North Carolina, says: "I asked 
a slave-dealer if he often bought the wife without the 
husband ? Oh, yes, often, and frequently too, they sell 
me the mother, while they keep her children. I have 
often known them to take away the infant from its mo- 
therms breast, and keep it ivhile they sold her.^^ An ad- 
vertisement in the Georgia Journal, January 2, 1838, 
describing the property of Gabriel Gunn, to be sold, 
mentions one child named James, about eight months 
old. 

Niles' (Baltimore) Register, vol. 35, p. 4, says: "Deal- 
ing in slaves has become a large business — establisli- 
ments are made in several places in I\Iaryland and Vir- 
ginia, at which they are sold like cattle. These places 
of deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with 
thumb-screws and gags, and ornamented with cow-skins 
and other Avhips, oftentimes bloody. '^ 

" Of the extent of this trade," says a writer in the 
New Jersey State Gazette, " few of us have any just 
conception. Between the years 1817 and 1837, a period 
of twenty years, 300,000 slaves were taken from Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, and Maryland, to the Southern 
market, agreeably to the statement of the Rev. Dr. Gra- 



ham, of North Carolina; and in 1635, it was estimated 
by the most intelligent rnen in Virginia, that 120,000 
slaves were exported from that State during the pre- 
ceding twelve months. About two-thirds of these accom- 
panied their owners, who removed; the remaining one- 
third were sold at an average of 8600 each, amounting 
to 824,000,000, which the domestic slave-trade poured 
into Virginia in one year. ' In 1836,' says the Mary- 
ville (Tennessee) Intelligencer, ' 60,000 slaves passed 
through a little western town on their way to the South- 
ern market, and in the same year four States imported 
200.000 slaves from the North.' In 1837, a committee 
appointed by the citizens of Mobile (Alabama) to inquire 
into the causes of pecuniary distress so prevalent, report- 
ed, that between 1833 and 1837, Alabama alone import- 
ed from the Northern Slave States 810,000,000 worth 
of slaves annually, amounting to forty millions in four 
years." 

The Government of Denmark is making progress to- 
L wards Emancipation in her colonies. 
■|L France is seriously contemplating the Abolition of Sla- 
^Bvery in her colonial dominions; and the Bey of Tunis 
^Bias actually put an end to the system throughout his do- 
minions, stating it to be the result of a conviction which 
had long impressed his mind. 

In looking at the objects of our Association, we are 
sensible of occupying a responsible position, and earn- 
estly desire to maintain it in a manner consistent with 
our christian profession. 

We regret that feelings of distrust and a want of cha- 
rity should exist amongst Friends in reference to their 
testimony against Slavery — and we indulge the hope, 
that a disposition may prevail to search out the causes 
of difficulty where they exist, and have them tested bv 
the plumb-line of Truth. 



10 

For ourselves, while claiming the privileges of ex- 
hortation and remonstrance, in brotherly love, with our 
fellow members, let us be willing to concede the same 
to them, — and in all our efforts to carry out our convic- 
tions, strive to give evidence that we have the peaceable 
spirit and wisdom of Jesus. Let us then go forward 
with hope, bearing with each other's infirmities, and re- 
membering our own weaknesses, — endeavour to encou- 
rage to love and good works. 

We have much to remind us of the importance of 
fidelity to manifested duty, and the uncertainty of our 
tenure upon life. One after another of our little com- 
pany has been called from works to rewards since our 
last annual meeting — and of those set apart to embody 
this report, one of the most steadfast* has been stricken 
down almost while thus engaged ; and while finishing 
the labor he assisted in commencing, the hearts of his 
survivors are overflowing with sorrow for his loss. But 
he has left behind him a rich legacy of love — an exam- 
ple that should cheer and animate us in the path of duty, 
and incite us to emulate his firmness and devotion in 
acting out our convictions of right. 

On behalf of the Association, 

JACOB M. ELLIS, 
LYDIA GILLINGHAM. 
Philada., 5ih mo., 1846. Clerks. 

* Daniel Neall. 



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